The Great MTG Betrayal on Immigration

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) held great promise for the future of America First conservatism. But, in a recent interview on the Tim Dillon Show, she revealed her true liberal colors on immigration, sharply criticizing President Donald Trump’s deportation of illegal aliens.

“As a conservative and as a business owner in the construction industry, and as a realist, I can say we have to do something about labor,” she said. “And that needs to be a smarter plan than just rounding up every single person and deporting them just like that.”

That’s a sharp reversal from telling now-White House Border Czar Tom Homan last year that she was “looking forward to the next administration, where we’re going to have the largest deportation system that’s ever been witnessed in human history.”

(READ MORE: ICE Must Finish the Job in the Nation’s Capital)

It’s also a stark departure from her X post last December, predicting, “President Trump’s plan for the largest deportation in American history will save taxpayers billions!”

President Trump’s plan for the largest deportation in American history will save taxpayers billions!

Americans are being forced to pay for housing, food, hospital bills, and, in many cases, incarceration for people who should have never been here.

We must secure the border! https://t.co/FkipEvyDPZ

— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) December 3, 2024

In the Dillon interview, she added that she wants an “off-ramp” for business owners to wean them from illegal alien labor just as she wants an “off-ramp” from the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).

But that’s comparing apples and oranges. Congress passed Obamacare, and only Congress can provide that “off-ramp.” Congress never amnestied illegal aliens. Employers who hire them are breaking the law. Period.

The American democratic system doesn’t allow for a gradual labor replacement plan.

Trump has been president, or campaigning for president, for nine years on an anti-illegal immigration platform. If construction employers haven’t replaced their illegal aliens yet, giving them a time frame wouldn’t make them start. Instead of increasing their payroll to hire Americans, they would simply increase their campaign contributions to politicians like Greene.

The hard reality is that most business owners care no more about American workers than 19th century slaveowners. They didn’t go into business out of patriotism; they went into business to make money.

If they can make more money selling from Vietnam, they will.

If they can make more money hiring illegal aliens, they will.

Only credible threats of fining them into bankruptcy or prosecuting them will make them adopt America First business practices.

Unlike the working poor on Obamacare, these people deserve no sympathy because they started their companies on an illegal business model and are hurting Americans by passing them over for foreign workers.

MTG: The Making of a Fake MAGA Warrior

Greene’s comments make sense considering the criticism she received from her 2020 primary opponent John Cowan, who noted she refused to use E-Verify in her construction business.

Cowan was right to call her an “opportunist politician.”

Republican voters had not yet lived through Joe Biden’s open borders apocalypse and had more pressing issues on their minds. The success of the feminist #MeToo Movement and social media savvy of younger Democrat women like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes (D-NY) suggested the next generation of female voters would be lost to a GOP that couldn’t keep up with the online influencer world.

Greene offered a much-needed answer to Ocasio-Cortes. Both had cutesy acronyms, were social media-dominant, came from safe districts, and Greene gave the impression she was just as far on the GOP’s right flank as Ocasio-Cortes was on the Democrats’ left.

But Greene’s supposed radicalism was simply an obsession with conspiracy theories.

She didn’t bother to vote in the 2012 presidential election, the 2014 midterms, or even the 2016 presidential election—despite making a one-time donation to Trump.

She rode Trump’s endorsement to her primary victory but didn’t become politically active because of his signature issues like mass immigration or free trade—both of which devastated her district more than any other in Georgia.

Instead, she became activated by a cult that believed a cabal of space laser-wielding, Satan-worshipping pedophiles controlled the government, and a storm was coming to overthrow them and restore America’s rightful rulers.

The QAnon conspiracy lent a quasi-religious explanation for why no matter how often America’s forgotten men and women voted, the government never worked for them, while politicians’ net worth skyrocketed. Greene’s own net worth has, ironically, increased from $700,000 to $25 million in her four years in Congress.

Like all unfulfilled End Times cults, however, QAnon fizzled as plan trusters realized Trump would not ride back into the White House in 2021 to vanquish evil.

Greene promptly disavowed her previous conspiratorial beliefs as zealous ignorance and, as noted, fed the MAGA base red meat on immigration through campaign and House floor rhetoric.

All it took, though, was Trump following through on that rhetoric for her to realize he didn’t intend to stop with deporting “bad hombres,” which went against her core belief in foreign, exploitable labor.

A Cautionary Tale: Tricking People on Mass Deportation Won’t Work 

Greene is not alone in backtracking on mass deportations after seeing what it means.

Trump’s 2024 victory was different in that he drew the endorsements of normally apolitical influencers like podcasters Theo Von and Joe Rogan. Recently, both have criticized the mass deportations.

“I really thought they were going to just go after the criminals,” Rogan recently complained on his podcast. “I really thought there was enough gang members, enough MS-13 members and whatever they were looking for.”

Rogan is a known chameleon but Greene’s boldness to buck Trump’s campaign promise in action is more troubling. It shows she feels it’s politically safe to do so. 

As Restoration News previously noted, the Department of Homeland Security and White House communications teams are falling into a trap by selling immigration enforcement through horror stories about cartel violence and child trafficking. 

The truth is that violent criminals make up a tiny fraction of the illegal alien population, and many so-called “trafficking” cases are little more than migrant teenagers doing an honest day’s work to send money home—not exactly the stuff of QAnon fantasies. 

To understand why Americans—even those who lean conservative—hold liberal views on immigration, it’s important to understand where they’re coming from ideologically and financially.

Americans of every political stripe have been brainwashed since they were toilet trained by the lie that America is “a nation of immigrants.” Using the legal versus illegal distinction does not work when they see, know, or employ illegal aliens who are outwardly law-abiding, love their families, go to church, work hard, and don’t cause problems.

Rewiring voters’ view of themselves, their country, and the trespassers in their midst also requires overcoming the business interests who prefer to keep voters brainwashed so they can keep the underpaid illegal aliens around.

By exaggerating violent threats, DHS risks alienating voters it needs to keep doing its job after future elections. Fearmongering is a useful electoral strategy to get apolitical people to wake up to clear and present threats. But it’s not a long-term policy strategy. 

A Permanent Strategy

If MAGA wants staying power, the message must stop being about fear and start being about fairness—about how foreigners are draining American taxpayers, taking Americans’ jobs, crowding out American students, and siphoning what little wealth they create through remittances. Otherwise, the Democrats’ counterargument that anyone who wants to contribute positively to America should be let in will make sense, and the cycle will continue.

Greene’s criticism of Trump’s mass deportations shows she doesn’t really believe in one of the key tenets that made her a MAGA star. Her journey from QAnon conspiracist to congressional influencer reveals a political entrepreneur driven by personal ambition. Hot rhetoric on illegal immigration circles the wagons and riles up opponents, but when implemented, it hurts the business world she comes from and represents. 

As an entrepreneur, however, Greene obviously senses a public shift. Trump’s communications strategy of selling immigration enforcement through exaggerated tales of cartel violence and child trafficking wins elections but it’s a poor substitute for honesty for long-term policy implementation. If MAGA is to survive, it must convert voters to a lasting understanding of mass immigration’s economic and national costs. Otherwise, more MAGA stars will feel emboldened to take off the mask and show they only ever were Chamber of Commerce liberals, riding the Trump Train until it outlived its usefulness. 

(READ MORE: Stacked Seats—How Immigration Tilts the Scales for Democrats in Congress)